I got scammed, a PSA

I got scammed yesterday. I'm not naive and I consider myself aware of scam tactics, and I still fell for it. It was so elaborate and convincing. I'm posting for awareness so that this doesn't happen to others and dissuade them from helping people who are actually in need. I don't really need commentary on how I should have known this was a scam.

TLDR if a woman with kids asks you to help her get into a safe harbor hotel to flee an abusive husband, don't give her $163

I was walking in my neighborhood and a woman in a white mini van pulled up and asked me if I could help her. She had three kids in the van and told me she was pregnant, that they were fleeing domestic violence and had been in the van for four days after driving off while her husband was passed out drunk. She did not ask me for money. She did not pressure me in any way. She just seemed scared. She apologized with tears in her eyes that she and her kids looked unkempt. She asked me to call a domestic violence hotline number that she had (she said she didn't have a phone because she was worried her husband could track her on it). She said she had already been to a police station and a women's shelter and was told there was no room in any shelters for two weeks. I called the number and spoke to a professional sounding woman who answered. She gave me her name and knew all the right things to say to sound legitimate. Told me she recognized this woman's description and that she was in her system on a shelter waitlist. Then she told me the only thing they could do was put her up in a safe harbor hotel until a spot opened up in a shelter. The woman would need $163 cash plus enough to buy food until they could give her food stamps on Wednesday. It all sounded very official. She stayed on the phone with me while I went to the ATM and came back, because she "could only hold the hotel room while we were still in contact," all the while telling me reassuring things about how they would help this family. I got back to the van and gave the woman $200 cash plus some packaged food I grabbed from my kitchen because I thought the kids were hungry.

Then I searched on nextdoor and found that this same woman had fooled many others around Houston recently. She probably laughed at me as she drove away. It makes me feel sick how she involved her kids, telling her nervous looking daughter "it's okay sweetie, why don't you tell the lady your name". Oh well. I would rather fall for a scam than not help a fellow human in need.